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Credit Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Shoptalk: Capturing Dance

By Andrea MohinJun. 1, 2009Jun. 1, 2009

There are probably very few technical problems that the photo staff of The Times hasn’t encountered at least once or twice. We invite the readers of Lens to pose questions of their own, in the hope that our experience can help. For starters: how do I photograph my daughter’s dance recital so that the pictures aren’t dark or blurry? Please use the comment feature below to submit your own questions.

First of all, good luck. Dance is one of the most difficult things to document. Photographing fast movement in low light can be challenging.

More than likely, the blurry photographs you’re getting are a result of a shutter speed that’s too slow. It’s very important to use all the tools your camera provides. Balancing the fastest shutter speeds (to freeze action) with the fastest ASA settings possible (usually 1600) will help. The level of available light may limit you to only one of these techniques.

When there isn’t enough light to allow you to increase your shutter speed, even with the highest ASA setting, you can also try panning — moving your camera steadily to follow the action. If you can pan your camera to follow the movement, it will help isolate your subject from the action happening all around.

Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesMarcelo Gomes in the American Ballet Theater’s “Sleeping Beauty.”

It’s also important to remember to stabilize your camera. If you’re not confident in your ability to hold it steady, a tripod will help and will allow you to lower your shutter speed in order to increase the exposure. An old rule says never lower your shutter speed below the length of your lens. For example, if you’re shooting with a 200-millimeter lens, it’s probably best not to shoot slower than 1/200th of a second. Since this speed will restrict your ability to gain a better exposure in low light, the stability provided by a tripod will help you get away with a slower speed, something like 1/125th of a second. This is also where panning can help. A tripod is steadier for this than an untrained hand.

Keeping your eye on the prize — your daughter’s performance — by training your lens on her as you follow her movement through the performance will also help you concentrate your attention so that you’re ready to capture the moment when it arrives.

My wife was a dance instructor and I used to photograph her recitals and performances. Here are a few additional tips:
1. The lighting will change from scene to scene. Set an exposure compensation of +1 to +1.5 and spot meter on some exposed skin when the lighting changes. Use this exposure until the lighting changes again.
2. It is helpful if you’re familiar with the performance. Attend a dress rehearsal if possible. There are natural pauses in the action, like the peak of a leap, that will result in better photographs, especially if you know they’re coming.
3. A monopod offers more mobility than a tripod.
4. Never use flash during a performance. It annoys the audience and can be hazardous to the dancers.
5. Talk to the event sponsors about where you may position yourself to take positions without disturbing others. For amateur performances you may even be given a chance to shoot from the wings backstage where some great shots can be found.

Hi Andrea,
Your photos are great! You really capture the energy of the show. Nice color saturation, compositions, and negligible noise (at least from what I can tell on screen). Are you photographing during dress rehearsals, or do you walk around through the audience during a professional performance? Also, do you have any preferred lenses?
Thanks!
Juozas Cerniushttp://www.caslon-photo.com

Fast glass and high ISO speed are the key. I’ve had to do a dance recital and a musical recently, both under poor lighting. f/2.8 and ISO 1600 are the minimum, and even then you often have to underexpose a bit and bump up the exposure later in software. If you can shoot in RAW, that helps a lot, both with exposure and with correcting the white balance when the lights are all kinds of crazy colors.

It’s also useful to go to a rehearsal so you have some idea of the choreography and how the dancers will be moving. This can help you plan your shoot…’cause there is nothing more frustrating than training your camera on a dancer just to have him/her leap out of the frame as you click the shutter.

Another tip: try to shoot as the dancer reaches the high point of a movement. Usually there is one where the dancer is momentarily still and shooting then will help avoid blurry pictures.

Another tip: since the lighting is changing constantly from one scene to another and lenses/sensors react differently to different colors of light, which can cause blank white overexposed faces, for example, I find it more useful to measure the scene and set the camera’s exposure on manual (and shoot in RAW format if possible). Then you can compensate for any underexposure later in an image editing program. With digital cameras it is much easier to work with an underexposed shot than an overexposed shot – if there is no detail in an overexposed face there is no way to bring it back!

Amazing photo’s, sometimes dance action is so fast that you do not get a chance to see the joy on the dancers faces.

Fast glass — I used to have camera envy but finally got a nice DSLR that I like, now I have lens envy. My local camera shop rents pro lenses by the day or week and I have been tempted to rent one just to see what it is like, but I am afraid that once I try them I will be forced to sell my soul for a great lens.

I’m a dance photographer — both doing my own personal work, as well as creating images for dancers and choreographers. What an exciting endeavor!

Dance is, indeed, a challenging subject, and there are many approaches. It’s not clear whether we should be stopping the action with a fast shutter or even faster strobe, using a slow shutter speed to create a blurred trail, or doing multiple exposures to show an action sequence superimposed on one image. Any of these might be a “right” way — and it appears that Andrea Mohin has used each of these techniques in at least one of the photos. Our perception of the dance may not have anything to do with the choreographer’s or dancer’s intention, but it must inform our image making.

My only suggestion to add here: Look before you shoot! This may seem obvious, but many of my students assume (without thinking) that they need to photograph the most perfect arabesque, the highest leap . . . the dancer’s tour de force. But, really, we need images that tell our story of the dance.

On of my favorites in this set of images by Andrea Mohin is #12 — showing a ballet instructor and ten of her students. Nobody is doing anything exceptional, but no matter. This picture captures the focus, the energy, the life of a ballet class.

And probably the most important tip: don’t even bother if you’re using a sub-$500 point-and-shoot digital camera. The chances are good that you’ll be too far away and your camera simply doesn’t perform well in low light.

In this case, equipment is key. A $1000 digital SLR and $1000 fast lens will do wonders.

Otherwise, you may as well be wondering, “How can I win the Indy 500 in my Honda Fit?” The Fit does a lot of things well but winning races is not one of them. Same goes for your tiny point-and-shoot digital camera.

An effective alternative to a tripod or monopod is a miniature tripod or shoulder-pod. These can reduce unwanted camera shake by quite a bit while giving freedom to pan the camera. A Leica table-top tripod with a large ball-head can be adjusted into a chest-pod. The extra mass helps too, especially with lighter cameras which might shake more.

Absolutely beautiful photographs. And your advice is right on. I’ve been shooting dance in the Twin Cities for five years now and it is the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. I would add that a person should study dance to add to their understanding of what’s happening. Anticipation is really big. I prefer shooting hand held to using any support but I’m usually shooting dress rehearsals and like to move around. Shooting during an actual performance can be a problem because of the noise from the shutter and being tied down to one location. Also I’d recommend shooting a lot and expect to “throw away” a lot.
Once again, beautifyl photographs!

One of my favorite photographers who has absolutely captured the energy and mood of dancers is the photographer Antoine Tempe. His many years of following African dance has lead to an amazing amount of work, often published in the French magazines and newspapers like Le Monde and Liberation, in our dear NYT, and recently in a book.

As one who has danced for years (albeit in amateur performances) it has always fascinated me how the best photos can capture the complete movement of the dance, yet technically it is really a frozen pose that we see.

a) It’s true that equipment is important, but it’s not *that* critical. I did my first year’s worth of professional work with a nikon d100, and any digital SLR on the market is significantly better than that these days.

For example, the third image in the gallery here was shot with a d100.

Knowing the performance definitely helps, as I saw the potential for the spinning-pan shot the first time, but didn’t get it quite right, but was able to come back the next night to get it just right.

I strongly disagree with HT about not being able to do anything good with a point and shoot. You certainly need to understand the limits of your equipment, and there are restrictions with your average point and shoot, but if you learn how to use spot metering and exposure compensation, you can do a lot with them. Most point and shots also have at least some long-exposure capabilities, and if you brace them well they’re quite well suited for the movement-trail approach that Arthur mentioned.

One huge advantage that point-and-shoots have over SLRs for photographing actual performances is that they are dead silent. (Just make sure you go into your settings and disable the beeps and the flash!) –

Granted, they’re not as responsive, but if you’re stuck photographing one of those moments where there’s dance happening in dead silence, and you’ve got to be respectful of the audience around you, a $200 point-and-shot that you can use is going to be a lot more useful than a $9000 SLR that you can’t.

b) Regarding cdog’s comment, I agree that fast (large-aperture) lenses are super helpful, high-ISO’s are not *imperative* – I tend to shoot most of my images at iso 400 or 800, and sometimes even slower, because I think that movement images get far more interesting when they’re half sharp and half showing movement. (again, see that gallery above, or http://www.howphillymoves.org )

c) knowing the piece, and having a chance to photograph it multiple times is probably the most important. Photographing a dance performance for the first time is kind of like photographing a sporting event, except with the added challenge of shifting lighting. Sometimes you flat out need a teleporter and a time machine, because when the dancer moves one foot or the lighting cue changes, you’ll find that the shot that you want to take now requires a completely different vantage point, lens, and choice of settings. But if you get to photograph the piece multiple times, you can be ready for these things.

d) While it’s a steeper learning curve, I recommend keeping to manual exposure mode… frustrating at first but you’ll be more aware of how you’re working with movement if you’re constantly thinking about your shutter speeds.)

e) As has been mentioned, photographing rehearsals is generally far more productive than photographing a performance… photographing dance is a dance in and of itself, as you really need to be able to move to react to their movements, and it’s generally intrusive to an audience. ( Unless you actually become part of the performance, which happened to me here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvYTFxYTSiA )

f) to Eesha – you don’t need a camera that does five frames per second, unless you’re specifically trying to do motor sequences. That applies both to dance and anything else. What *is* helpful is a camera with minimal shutter lag.
If you’re just holding down the button, the peak action will probably happen in between two of your frames, and you’re just left with a bunch of similar frames and not the good one.

g) one last tip-> make sure you’ve got a good understanding of exposure!

While camera light-meters have gotten a lot more sophisticated, they still are based on the general assumption that your subject is evenly lit and averages out to middle gray. That’s fine out there in the real world, but a lot of dance is spot-lit or side lit, with a dark background… all that black in the frame will fool your meter into forcing slower shutter speeds, leading to more blur than you’d like, a gray background, and an overexposed figure. The poor little camera brain will also get thrown off by costumes, for example white outfits in front of a white background… again, shooting in manual mode helps a lot with learning this.

Also, make use of EXIF info when you go back through your photos… the info that’s in the files will remind you exactly what shutter speed, aperture, metering mode, ISO & white balance you used, and you can reference that against the image as a learning tool… back in the day people had to take exposure notes on paper… embedded metadata is *far* easier!

I’ve set both of my DSLRs to auto ISO and put the max at 1600. If I’m shooting in daylight, the shots usually come in at the camera’s minimum ISO (100 for the D80 and 200 for the D40). If I don’t like the noise in an indoor photo, I will run it through Noise Ninja. But I seldom do that because I like the noise. It makes a photo gritty.

BTW, I do turn off the auto ISO for tripod shots and so I don’t forget, I taped a note to my tripod.

This has been a great discussion and I’m already pursuing one of the suggestions re: the Leica tripod.

I too was going to mention Noise Ninja as a tool for getting rid of the digital noise when shooting at 1600 ISO. A professional photographer friend, who shoots Oregon Ballet Theatre among others, swears by it. And since it creates a copy of the original, you don’t lose anything if you liked the grainy look better.

With regards to Samuel’s comments about the gear guaranteeing success… here’s a metaphor:

If you took me into a fancy high-end restaurant and threw me in their kitchen, with the fanciest of pots and pans , I wouldn’t be able to replicate their meals. I might make something decent, because they’d have good fresh ingredients but I haven’t trained as a chef and learned all of the subtleties of flavor interactions, preparation techniques, cooking times, etc.

Now if you took the chef from the high end restaurant and brought them into my kitchen, with my beat-up pots and pans, and dinky little stove, they could still cook you a delicious meal. Heck, a good chef could cook you a delicious meal on a campfire (having gone camping with the head chef of the Belgian embassy, I can attest to this.)

if you replace the idea of a chef with that of a photographer, then the pots and pans become cameras and lenses, good fresh ingredients are interesting subject matter, and the flavors are color, contrast and movement, and the preparation techniques are shutter speed, apertures, framing and choice of vantage point and timing..

I guarantee you that you can take a ton of crappy pictures with a d700 and some nice lenses. Of course, fancy gear is nice and all – but if you study the craft, you can take better pictures with whatever tools you happen to be using.

The most important tools in photography by far are your eyes, your brain, and your feet.

While not quite the same as Dance, I have photographed many Rock shows. The lighting can be even worse. I used a D50 and an 50mm F1.8 and was at 1600 ISO the whole time. Sure, the photos were noisy, but once printed, they looked great. What am I saying? People get uptight about noise but forget that the nature of a computer monitor creates half the noise. Photography is about printing pictures, and once you print them, the natural inconsistencies of ink and paper do away with any noise problems. No one worried about noise until stupid computers became a part of photography and trust me, I shot shows at 3200 using TRI-X and that is far noisier than even the cheapest digital SLR.